Thanks for giving this matter your time and attention. See the latest issue of the NIH Director's newsletter for an in-depth discussion of NIH's "Review of Peer Review:"
http://www.nih.gov/about/director/newsletter/Summer2007.htm
We wish you a great summer,
Pat Kobor Science Government Relations Office American Psychological Association
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Dear colleague: NIH released an important Request For Information earlier this month, asking for ideas about how to change current peer review and grant submission systems to better accommodate the increased number of grant applications and to ensure that the peer review system keeps pace with the science that it serves. Two newly-formed advisory groups will review the feedback and report to the NIH Director's Advisory Committee.
Please take a moment now to reflect on your own experience with the NIH system and provide some comments or react to suggestions that have been made. Many new ideas are floating around NIH now. For example, some feel peer review should be done via teleconference or online software instead of face-to-face meetings, to allow more flexibility and make serving on panels less burdensome. Some feel that to get the best reviewers, NIH should compensate them in some way (e.g. by providing an extra year of support for their research grants). Some have suggested that the grant application form be shortened. Others have said that shortened forms may adversely impact new investigators who have less data to present and have to lay out more theoretical information to demonstrate the quality of their ideas. Perhaps you feel that the current system is fair and working well overall -- then you should certainly say so.
On the website, http://enhancing-peer-review.nih.gov/ there are instructions for providing comments on these issues. We encourage you to submit comments directly to NIH, but in addition, to share your comments with us at APA so your views can inform the comments that APA will submit.
This issue is so very important to the support of psychological research-- it deserves a few minutes of your time. Please encourage your colleagues to respond as well. We at APA expect to submit comments on Monday, August 13, so we encourage you to share your comments (to pkobor@apa.org) by the close of business on Friday, August 10. The NIH deadline for response is 5 pm on August 17, 2007. (Note that the APA convention begins on August 16!)
On behalf of my colleagues in the Science Government Relations Office and Science Directorate, we look forward to reading your thoughts and ideas on the NIH peer review system.
Patricia Clem Kobor Senior Science Policy Analyst Science Government Relations Office American Psychological Association (202) 336-5933 (202) 336-6063-f pkobor@apa.org http://www.apa.org/ppo <http://www.apa.org/ppo>
